From the editor’s desk As we were ready to go to press, Norman Podhoretz died. He was one of the three most important conservative intellectuals of the American conservative movement of the second half of the 20th century alongside William F. Buckley, founder of National Review, and Irving Kristol, with whom Podhoretz is a founding godfather of neoconservatism. Neoconservatism has come into [...]
Josie Luetke: “You would prefer the human race to endure, right?” “Uh—” “You’re hesitating… Yes?” “Yep, well…I-I don’t know. I-I would—I would…um—” “This is a long hesitation. This is a long hesitation.” “There’s-There’s so many—there’s so many—there’s so many questions implicit in this.” “Should the human race survive?” “Uh…yes, but…” This June 2025 exchange between New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and [...]
John Carpay: Canada was one of the leaders of the international opposition to the Apartheid laws in South Africa, in force from 1948 to 1991. All South Africans were legally classified by race as White, Black, Coloured, or Indian, with laws defining the rights and obligations of each group. Apartheid laws enforced segregation in most spheres of life, including housing, marriage, and [...]
Rory Leishman: The United States Declaration of Independence famously asserts: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” As originally understood in 1776, the phrase “all Men” in this context referred to all humans. In [...]
Sporting Life, Victor Penney: Do you want to know one of the easiest ways to get under the skin of the toughest, most intimidating professional wrestlers on the planet? Call out pro-wrasslin’ for what it is: fake. The outcomes are predetermined and the moves are choreographed, but make no mistake: the athleticism and pain are real, and so is the passion. It’s [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements If you go by what you read or the cultural mood today, we’re doomed. In spite of improvements in life expectation, overall wages, quality of life, consumer goods and nutrition – among a dozen other benchmarks – the sense that we are on the downward slope of a decline persists, a subjective intimation [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: Abortion Pill Reversal: A Second Chance at Choice edited by George Delgado (Ignatius Press, $19.95, 254 pages) There is no better person to edit a collection of testimonials about Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) that its creator, Dr. George Delgado. In Abortion Pill Reversal: A Second Chance at Choice, Delgado describes how he came about inventing the “game changer” that gives [...]
From the editor’s desk: In October, Compact published a provocative essay by Helen Andrews titled “The Great Feminization” in which she argued that cancel culture is essentially feminine: “Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field.” The thesis is not Andrews’. She borrowed it from the pseudonymous J. Stone and an essay [...]
Josie Luetke: The sympathetic protagonist trotted out by pro-choicers is the teenager who accidentally gets knocked up. Think Ellen Page in Juno or Shailene Woodley in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (disregarding the bit of trivia that both their characters gave birth). Yet, this stereotype hasn’t reflected reality for a while. According to Statistics Canada, in 1975, girls under 20 [...]
Victor Penney: Interim writer Victor Penney, Sporting Life College basketball has lost one of its impressive figures, and no, it wasn’t a lean, mean, dunking machine — it was a five-foot nun in a wheelchair. I’m talking about Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who died back on Oct. 9 at the tender age of 106. She was a Sister of Charity [...]
Rory Leishman: In yet another deeply disturbing development in the rapidly evolving science of in vitro fertilization (IVF), Professor Shoukrhat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health and Science University announced in a paper published in Nature Communications on Sept. 30 that a research team led by him has succeeded in transforming human skin cells into human eggs. Mitalipov anticipates that once this technique [...]
Donald DeMarco: I had a terrible dream last night. Maybe it was brought about by that extra slice of “everything on it” pizza I consumed before I retired. It was having its revenge. At any rate, the dream was not only terrifying, but it lasted a long time. I hastened to write it down before I forgot the incidents that rose to [...]
John Carpay: Interim writer, John Carpay, Law Matters If passed into law, the Combatting Hate Act (Bill C-9) will make Canada more like the increasingly authoritarian United Kingdom. U.K. police now arrest more than 30 people every day for offensive tweets, question citizens for political commentary, and have even arrested parents in front of their children, over private WhatsApp messages. [...]
Josie Luetke: Last month, I shared how Campaign Life Coalition, with the help of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, is legally challenging the rules barring abortion victim photography or any “signs or banners that display explicit graphic violence or blood” on Parliament Hill. Our hearing date, originally scheduled for Oct. 2, has been postponed, but since I last wrote, the respondents, [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Last month, critic Ted Gioia published an article on his Substack site, The Honest Broker, titled “Is Mid-20th Century American Culture Getting Erased?” He begins by responding to an Atlantic magazine story about the writer John Cheever, once a major figure in American literature until his death in 1982, though as the writer [...]